


How To Get Cute Boys To (Literally) Fall For You - The Handy Pocket Guide

by cinnamonsnaps



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alphabeta Soup, Comedy, Gift for Flarping, Humor, M/M, Puppets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3154220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time John sees Dirk, it's usually from an odd angle while being bombarded with falling debris. It's not his fault circumstances keep pushing him into falling for Dirk.<br/>Or, well. Falling in general.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Get Cute Boys To (Literally) Fall For You - The Handy Pocket Guide

**Author's Note:**

> Dirk/Bro is 20 and also the same person, John and Dave are 18, and nobody is dead.
> 
> This was a gift written for my secret santa giftee on Flarping! If you don't know what that is, check out flarping.com. Trust me. Tr u s t me

 

“Does your brother think he’s cool or something?”

Dave didn't look away from the television screen, where his character, skate champion Dude Stoner, was glitching into the wall. “What are you talking about. Dude, remember who he is. The answer is yes. Duh.”

John snorted and turned away from what he was staring at before - an artfully arranged French marionette with a coquettish smile on the spare sofa cushion, arms splayed towards him with a hint of supplication - and concentrated on beating Dave’s skate combo with his own character, Crabface Chowderman. It was pretty unsuccessful, because he kept falling through objects and glitching to the other end of the map. The puppet sharing the sofa with them was offsetting him. Dirk was a weird asshole, and John only ever caught glimpses of him every now and then, like a toned weeaboo Bigfoot.

“The whole puppet shtick. Like. Is that meant to be funny? Because it’s just weird. I mean - what is he 20, and he’s playing with dolls?”

Dave set down his own controller with a click. “They’re not dolls. They’re carefully chosen by hand in order to achieve maximum freakout-slash-intrigue two times combo switcharound. He’s got like this expert eye for knowing which one is going to make you get the creeps best, but he also like, post-ironically collects them. It’s a kind of satire, you know.”

John stared at Dave with one raised eyebrow, before hitting a button to reset the entire game on screen.

“Your brother is an idiot,” he said simply, dismissing the entire spiel as bullshit.

 

* * *

 

 

18 was a weird kind of age to be. John had a free summer ahead of him before he packed up to the local college, and he intended to make as much use of that as possible doing JACK SHIT. His itinerary included eating, sleeping, playing videogames, and maybe going over to Dave’s and doing all three at his place.

At least, that was the plan.

What he hadn't reckoned on was his dad’s sudden fixation on making him do weird “grown up” things in order to “build character” and “gain life experience” or whatever. Why did John have to learn how to wire a plug? Why should John have to sacrifice a beautiful summer’s day to put up a shed?

“Go buy another kilo of flour, John,” John muttered in a fake low voice as he examined the meagre baking selection at his local corner store. “Baking is a staple activity for the refined gentleman, John. Bluh bluh cakes and scones bluh bluh huge fucking waste of time.” What did Dad want again? Cornflour, regular flour or baking yeast? Wholegrain, self raising or plain flour? Why did there have to be so many things to choose from in a local convenience store? There were far too many prices and values!

With three bags of good old serviceable plain white flour, John took a step back to look at the top shelf - and promptly tripped over some asshole’s foot. The flour hit the floor with three dull thumps, and John just managed to stomp a foot out to save himself. He looked his new assailant in the face, ready to flip them off.

It was Dave’s bro. John’s hand stopped mid gesture.

Dave’s bro didn't say anything - he just looked at John with his mouth pressed into a firm line, two spots of pink colouring his cheeks. John waited for the apology. And kept waiting. The silence had become suitably awkward when John decided to break it by saying “dude, it’s me, John.”

“I know,” was the immediate and abrupt reply. “I'm Dirk, fuck, that’s what I meant. I’ll help you with the flour accident 101 which seems to have happened here. My fault. My shout.”

Those were the most words that John had ever heard come from the dude, in all the times he’d been at Dave’s house. To John, it had always seemed like Dave’s bigger brother - wait, Dirk, or whatever - was either too aloof to spend more than three seconds at a time in John’s presence, or he was too awkward. John was beginning to put his money on “awkward”. His expression seemed to betray his thoughts, because Dirk was looking distinctly uncomfortable, one hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck languidly. John watched him do it, totally absorbed. Okay, so, Dave’s bro was weird and all, but he was also kind of good looking, and when he did that he looked just like an ordinary young man doing his shopping. He lost his mystery, his intimidation (if he ever had any!) and became...

Likeable.

“Dirk,” said John. “It’s okay. I mean, that’s kinda what I originally wanted to do with all this flour, you know. Dump it all over the floor. That’s why I buy flour, don’t you know.”

“Haha.” Dirk laughed in a very forced way and shuffled backwards. “Yeah, I. Wow, what are you making, a cake for... the floor.” When Dirk spoke, it was stilted and rushed, as if he was horrified by the complete incoherency which suddenly had struck him. It was embarrassing. John was embarrassed for him, but in a nice way - it just made Dirk more endearing. “Anyway I'm out. Gotta get all checked up and priced down. Over and out. Gone.”

John could hear him quietly swearing at himself all down the next aisle as he rushed for the cashiers. What a fucking dork, he thought. Dave must be completely delusional if he really thought his big brother was, in any way shape or form, cool.

 

* * *

 

The next time John saw Dirk was later on in the summer, when he and Dave had decided to set up a paddling pool on the apartment roof and sit in it with the girliest fruit cocktails possible. John had just ran down the long set of communal apartment block stairs in only his swimming trunks to fetch a new batch of ice and lime slices, and had let himself into the Strider apartment, when Dirk suddenly appeared blocking the path to the fridge. John nearly bumped into him, managing to pull back in time with some seriously frantic arm waving.

“Woah! Woah, whoops, sorry. Hey, where do you keep your limes?”

Dirk said nothing in return: he just stood uselessly, glass of orange juice collecting condensation in his grip. John raised an eyebrow. Was Dirk waiting for him to say please or something?

“Limes?” he tried, in case Dirk functioned better with monosyllabic direct inquiries. Dirk pointed to a cupboard behind John, still silent. This did not help John’s vivid impression of Dirk being some kind of mute nerd hermit, spending his time cooped in his room sewing puppets and watching anime.

(John assumed that was what Dave’s bro did all day, but who knew? Not even Dave knew.)

“Thanks,” John said, shuffling around Dirk to search through the cupboards. His hand reached out to open the nearest one. “Dave is literally guzzling away at the Pink Ladies we made and we are having a real ice cube emergency up there-”

“Not that one.” Dirk suddenly flash stepped in front of him, arms blocking access to any of the cupboards and only the barest hint of panic in his voice. “Not any of them. Sorry. Forgot. Let me get the limes for you.”

“Why?” John went to open the cupboard again. “Is this the sword thing? Dave promised me he’d cleaned them all out for today.”

“No it’s uh-” Dirk began, fielding off John’s grabby hands and waving arms. “Stop, seriously, you don’t want to-” He dodged a particularly errant arm which might have given him a black eye had he not ducked. “Look hey stop already jesus fucking- Dude-”

John ignored him, ducked under Dirk’s grip, and opened the cupboard.

Then he was on the floor in a confusing whirl of sharp metallic clanging, forceful hands, and the gentle pitter patter of boxes upon boxes of pop tarts and crackers raining down from the cupboard. John opened one of his eyes, which he had glued shut, and was met with the sight of one dark and freckled arm stretched out across him, and a hand holding a throwing star which looked as though it had been on a collision course with John’s face. In fact, there were lots of throwing stars scattered around him, and cheap as they might have been they still had a sharp edge to them. John reckoned they would have at least shredded his clothes had he caught their brunt.

“What,” he said stupidly.

“Fuck,” said Dirk from his position crouched somewhere above John, just as eloquently. The vague sense of weight shifted from above John and things lightened up considerably once the arm was removed from obstructing his view. The kitchen linoleum made scuffing sounds as Dirk’s orange sneakers absconded from his field of vision, and then there was only the low hum of the refrigerator.

Until Dave walked in.

“What the fuck. Did Bro put the throwing stars back in the cupboard? Dude must have forgotten you were coming over again, or maybe I forgot to tell him, whatever. Shit, you must have some kind of Matrix reflex going on there because I have no idea how you avoided all of these.” Dave padded over to the microwave as John picked himself up from the floor, pulling a lime out of it with the same flourish a magician might use to pull a rabbit from a hat (or a box, hehe). John said nothing, merely sparing a glance along the hall to where Dirk’s room was, to where the door firmly snapped shut.

 

* * *

 

John spent a lot of the new semester at college thinking about Dave’s bro - or Dirk, as he had stopped being the mysterious and grown up Bro when John had seen him blush like a teenager in the middle of the baking section of a corner shop.

Dave had often told him about how their weird little family came to be - the absent parents, the string of foster homes until Dirk could finally live alone with Dave as his legal guardian, the endless paperwork and legality and bureaucratic red tape; about how Dirk had fought his hardest for the right to keep Dave, get a job, get money, get the apartment; about how his bro looked so much older than he really was.

Except, John thought, he didn't look that old. He just looked like an older brother. A dude doing things he shouldn't be doing that young, and somehow handling it, when he should be just a few steps ahead of John. Someone worthy of admiration.

Yet John couldn't admire him, not in the same way Dave seemed to, which involved a lot of unhealthy hero worship and apery. John just liked him.

 

* * *

 

“Merry Christmas, you filthy animal,” said Dave, shoving a couple of messily wrapped presents into John’s hands. “Thanks for finding the time in your incredibly busy schedule to come and see us finally. It’s not even Christmas any more. What the fuck.”

John squirmed guiltily on the futon, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Look, my dad likes us to have a family orientated Hanukkah, and we had Rose and her mom over, and then we had to do all the baking and the decorating and... this is the first chance I had to escape!” John tried to look as if he had been helplessly trapped for a month in his house, forced to bond with his father and eat endless seasonal food. He patted his belly and pouted. “Ever since I've been away at college, Dad just goes crazy whenever I come home again.”

“I forgive you,” Dave said, slapping John lightly upside the head. “For now. You better know you’re gonna have to grovel so hard to make it up to me.”

There was a clatter from the kitchen, and John looked around wondering if Dirk was there, ignoring the sad looking Christmas decorations in the process of being packed up - were those santa hats perfectly fitted for smuppets? Dave grimaced.

“Ignore those. Bro wanted... ahem. ‘The whole family’ to be involved. He even made Lil Cal a lil stocking to hang up on the tv.”

“That’s really fucking weird,” said John, a little distractedly. He tried to crane his neck to see inside the kitchen, to see if he could catch a glimpse of Dirk’s angular shoulders and dumb pointy hair. And the shades. The """"ironic”””” shades, which John reckoned were less ironic and more genuine appreciation for bad 90s anime, whatever Dave said.

“Yeah. That’s what I said, like okay sure I respect Lil Cal has been here longer than I have but if the dude wants to give him a present every year and make him sit with us round the tree then-”

As if on cue, Lil Cal landed on Dave’s shoulders. Dave screamed in a very undignified manner.

John whirled around, looking for the source of who put him there - because really, there was no fucking way John was going to even contemplate the idea of that disturbing homunculus being autonomous - and seeing only the telltale whirl of a pizza menu floating to the floor.

“-TINY LITTLE WOODEN TEETH-” Dave was yelling, panicking and wrestling with the puppet, so John decided to ignore him because he was being useless and John had a mystery to solve. This was evidently how things were in the Strider household. Why had this event just happened? What was the point, what had it changed?

The pizza menu. John ran over and grabbed it from the floor. Someone - Dirk, obviously - had written “Pick something.” on it in black sharpie. Wow.

“Vegetarian,” he yelled into open air, wondering if that was how you were supposed to communicate with recluses. “Dave will probably want barbecue.” How had Dirk done it?? How had he dropped a big puppet and a leaflet without tripping over the myriad of swords on the floor, or the plush smuppets on the sofa? He couldn't just float over them, invisible, unless he was a ghost which John doubted because that sounded like the plot of a movie and John knew his life wasn't awesome enough to be a movie like that.

What if he had used neither sofa nor floor? John’s gaze slowly drifted upwards.

Oh. Oh, that was really sneaky. There, in the ceiling, was the barest outline of a hatch. Who even had that in an apartment? Why was that a thing? Did Dirk just crawl about in the floorspaces like a creepy oversized rat? John was almost in awe at the dedication this guy would put into a prank, but at the same token he was also worried - it seemed like Dave’s bro had far too much time on his hands.

Dave was too distracted still wrestling with Lil Cal to notice John quickly stacking furniture up to the ceiling. Soon, it was high enough that he could reach out and gently lift up the hatch, and John called upon all the reserves of upper body strength he had left from a summer full of doing odd jobs around the house with a hammer. His knee lifted up into the ceiling, and John pulled himself in, closing the hatch behind him (and not noticing the pile of furniture he had built topple over into an unsuspicious mess on the floor). It was only high enough to crawl in, but stretched out all around him, broken only by lots of wooden supports.

“... Egbert?” Dave’s voice filtered up through the ceiling. Evidently he had finished wrestling with Cal (and probably lost). “Uh. Where the fuck did you just go?”

John just snickered. As funny as it would be to pretend he was a disembodied ghost here to haunt Dave forever, he had a prank to figure out. Looking around, he took in the dark mess of spider’s webs and the barest light filtering in from the flat above between floorboards. There was a path meticulously covered with newspaper to avoid touching the dusty floor, where all the webs and tendrils of dry fluff were cleared. John followed it quickly, trying not to make any noise. This was horrifying. It was barely light enough for John to see how far the path was, and when a dismembered green smuppet head loomed from the gloom with staring eyes, he suppressed a shudder. At one point, the boards he was crossing creaked very very ominously, as if they might break (think light thoughts, think light thoughts!), but luckily they held.

There, up ahead, was a grill. Light came up from it in slots, and John silently crawled over it, looking in. He tried not to make a noise of triumph. It was a room he hadn't seen before - a bedroom - evidently Dirk’s, from the décor and the objects inside it, and also the fact that Dirk was sat on the bed talking into his mobile.

“Rox,” he said exasperatedly, and John realised he was talking to Rose’s cool mom who was also pretty young and kind of pretty. He hadn't realised they were friends! “Slow down, you’re going at 120 mph again. Hold your horses. Reign them in. Are they held fast now?” He paused. “Yeah, pull the fucking bolts in tight til shit’s secure as a bank vault.” Long pause. “Shut up, I'm not deviating.”

John could tell he was totally deviating. He had obviously interrupted a very (snort) serious conversation about serious grown up things, and he should probably start crawling away again before Dirk caught him and thought he was being an eavesdropper.

That was the new plan, until he heard his own name.

“-going to do _absolutely nothing_ about John,” Dirk said flatly. “Yes. Okay. Yes. You realise that I have heard this particular rambling soliloquy about the plushness of his rump _at least_ 50 times since you stayed over there.” John turned red, both horrified and flattered. “Yeah. You can stop soliloquizing at any time now.” And all this time he had thought Ms Lalonde was a gentlelady! John couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Dirk’s voice took on a tone so monotonous and flat that John nearly winced from how much it could cut. “Yes. Please continue. I’m going into raptures just thinking about him. _Swoon_.” His tone went normal again, which was to say it was still flat and monotonous but less so. “Look, Roxy, he’s probably busy at college doing college shit - I know, I know, I should be at college too, but I’m too busy for that. I’ve got a lot of assorted business of the serious kind on my plate - I’ve got no fucking time to even start thinking about college or parties or dating or whatever. Which is why I’m not going to start romancing my lil’ bro’s best friend out of the blue like some kind of sad old man. Wow, what the fuck, I am _not_ a sad old man.”

John shuffled awkwardly, looking at his own grubby fingernails with deep interest. It wasn’t really a huge revelation that Dirk hadn’t gone to college, but John thought it was sad. The dude was only 20! He should have been there, having fun doing... smuppet science, or whatever Dirk was into. Computer stuff? There seemed to be a lot of computer stuff scattered around his room. Was that... a human shaped chassis made of metal? Curiosity got the better of John, and he edged around the grill, trying to get a better view of the metal stuff. The ceiling once again creaked very ominously in places.

“Relationships - meaningful relationships - take time and effort. If I invest in one, I lose the other.” Dirk sounded vaguely sad. “I’d have to actually approach him. Say hi. Not clam up and start worrying about what to say.”

Woah, was that an electronic hand?? What the fuck, that was so cool! John leant over, trying to steal another glance at the wires and circuit boards, and more of the ceiling groaned ominously, raining plaster.

Dirk was too caught up in his own lamentations to notice. “I’ve got to engineer the situation carefully, Roxy. Set up the variables. Account for any unexpected scenarios. Come on, I can’t just fucking ask him or something, what do you take me for? Don’t answer that. Look...” He sighed. “Yeah, whatever, even if I were to admit that I think he’s pretty cute under extreme pressure and pain of death via slurred Lalonde recriminations, I can’t do it. No, I refuse to do it. The only way we’d ever end up together is if he literally fell into my lap like the world’s strangest Christmas present-”

The ceiling, which had been doing a commendable job of supporting John when he’d stayed on the bits Dirk had tested for strength and put newspaper on, couldn’t support the bulk of a growing 18 year old boy when he shuffled onto new, untested areas. John felt the floor give way beneath him with a sick turn in his stomach, and he only had time to think “uh oh” before the plaster and wood crumbled beneath him and down onto Dirk’s bed. John fell, scrabbling at the ceiling around him and failing to grab anything, down, down through the air and past a swinging lampshade, down past disconcerting posters of muscular horsemen -

Straight down into Dirk’s lap.

There was a long, long silence. The phone, dropped from Dirk’s hand to the bed, started squawking again as Roxy tried to figure out what that crashing noise had been.

John stared up at Dirk, wide eyed, while Dirk stared back at him, shades hanging off his face at a jaunty angle which gave him a rather deranged air. Wow. Cool eyes.

“Hello Mister Strider - Bro - Dirk sir,” said John casually, waving. “Just wanted to let you know that we uh, chose vegetarian and barbecue pizzas. Haha.”

Dirk opened his mouth - probably to say something like “fucking incredible” or “my fucking ceiling” or something - when Dave burst in the room.

“Bro I can’t find John and I think he was angry at me kinda I mean it’s cool and all I’m not worried or anything but what do I do -” Dave looked at John, cuddled in Dirk’s lap and hair white from plaster, and then looked at Dirk, equally whitened from the plaster and showing signs of concussion. John reckoned that was from being hit from above with an Egbert. “Okay. Well. That answers two mysteries. Case closed. Class dismissed.” Dave sounded vaguely hysterical, but he often did when it came to things changing suddenly. John had had a haircut once, and Dave had flipped out about that too, therefore John wasn’t too worried when Dave wheeled around as abruptly as he had appeared and slammed the door behind him, which John took as a cue to jump off Dirk and go order pizza with Dave.

“Sorry about your ceiling,” he said quickly, glancing up. “I didn’t mean to break it, yikes wow that’s quite damaged. Hm.” He wandered across the room and opened the door, about to leave, when a new thought occurred to him, Grabbing a sharpie, John ran to Dirk and grabbed his arm, quickly scribbling down “ectoBiologist” on the skin with little squeaking noises. “My chumhandle. To talk to me on pesterchum. Or, haha, charge me for damages... haha. Bye.”

With that, he left for real, shutting the door politely behind him.

 

* * *

 

Dirk sat in silence for a long time, surrounded by a mess of plaster, injury and horrible, irrational hope. This had been possibly the only scenario he hadn’t planned for. Dreamily, he grabbed his phone from the floor and held it to his ear, uttering in tones usually reserved for those who had just had religious experiences:

“I think my arm is broken.”

“Dirk, what.”

“I probably have concussion.”

“What.”

“I think I'm in love.”

“WHAT.”

"That's really all there is to say on the matter."


End file.
